3D printing - which software?

[Pete.]

Since I got my 3dprinter (Ender 3 pro) last year I've been ham-strung by my old 32bit PC running vista. It wouldn't run any of the modern software, but luckily would run Sketchup and Creality slicer so that allowed me to draw and print stuff although in a rather clunky manner.

Now I have just upgraded to a newer PC, a 64 bit i3 Dell running Windows 10. It's a modest machine but I'm sure it'll run any software I'll need for printing.

My question is, if you were me what software would you choose for drawing, slicing etc? Preferably I'd like to draw with free software but I'll pay a modest price if it's got good features. One thing I want to be able to do is print gear shapes (I'll stop short of actually calling them gears) so that's a consideration.

So, looking for yuor recommendations.

Pete

 

[pawsnizzy]

Fusion360
Cura

 

[Hood]

Maybe have a look at Gearotic if you will be doing that kind of thing, it is Art Fenerty Mach 3 creator who does it.

 

[Agroshield]

For gears specifically, if you only want spur gears, look for Geardxf. This will output a 2D dxf that you can then extrude into 3D. If you want other gears (spiral, herringbone, bevel and much more), look at Gearotic (written by Art, the one who wrote Mach3) https://www.gear2motion.com/

For 3D printing, you have to get away from the notion of drawing and think in terms of modelling.

Edit: for bog-standard gears, 3D models suitable for printing are often available from gear cutting companies or industrial supply people.

 

[awemawson]

Another vote for Fusion 360. PC needs to be Win10 / 64 bit

 

[Hood]

Maybe have a look at Gearotic if you will be doing that kind of thing, it is Art Fenerty Mach 3 creator who does it.

 

[Screwdriver]

I now use FreeCad, Cura but for the simple stuff I do, I still like to use Sketchup. I should probably carry on with Fusion though I was aiming at generative design which made the arduous task of learning a new software package well worth the effort. Now I am not sure they won't strip more features out of the free version once they get the numbers up.

 

[Pete.]

I do use geardxf, it's how I have printed gears before, importing the dxf into an old version of sketchup then drawing & opening in a newer version to export as a .dae file. Clunky, as I said but the only way I could find.

For CAD I used to use Draftsight but now that's gone outside of my budget. I'd pay for it but not £99 a year.

I've used Gearotic too, the free version which doesn't allow exporting. I don't know if my useage warrants the cost - I make gears from metal.

 

[ukracer]

Fusion360
Cura

+1

 

[Ali]

I’d go with Fusion and suffer the steep learning curve. Worth it not to pick up a non-transferable mindset you’ll get from other free packages and plenty of online help once you figure out what to search for.

 

[Agroshield]

For CAD I used to use Draftsight but now that's gone outside of my budget. I'd pay for it but not £99 a year.

There are not too many choices of budget 3d CAD. FreeCAD is the most well-supported non-commercial one. Maybe also have a look at Solid Edge Community Edition. Onshape is I think only in the nimbostratus.

 

[Mark 2]

Blender if you are feeling really brave.

 

[ukracer]

Blender if you are feeling really brave.

Omg that's awful....

 

[Mark 2]

Omg that's awful....

How so?

 

[ukracer]

How so?

Makes fusion seem so easy and a walk in the park....and I find be that hard. Lol

 

[m_c]

How so?

Blender is more aimed at creating and modelling 3D figures, so has a more 'artistic' approach to how you do things, which makes it pretty hard to use for engineering minded types.

 

[eSCHEn]

Solvespace for a constraints based approach.

FreeCAD for a more direct approach.

Blender if I want to model more naturally although as said it's more of a artist's package.

LibreCAD (which is 2D CAD) or Inkscape (vector drawing like Adobe Illustrator) if I need to put 2D elevations in place and extrude with one of the others.

 

[Dr.Al]

If you don't mind the idea of working in the "cloud", give onshape a go. It's free, fairly easy to use with excellent tutorials and more capability than most of the (low cost) competition. In my testing, the modelling was much more robust (to going back to an early sketch and changing stuff) than Fusion 360. Spur Gears are effortless:

Onshape has the advantage that a lot of the actual 3D modelling happens on onshape's servers and it's just rendered in the browser. What that means is it runs very well on a not-very-powerful computer.

If you don't like cloud stuff (or you want to keep your models private and don't want to pay the onshape fees - onshape is free for "public models"), look at Fusion 360 (but save all your models in STEP format in case they lock down the licence further and you can't get at your models any more).

FreeCAD is okay too, but has quite a learning curve and a few quirks that are still being ironed out. I'd recommend avoiding Alibre Atom3D - it's no better than FreeCAD (and I suspect FreeCAD will overtake it in capability pretty soon) and much more expensive than FreeCAD.

I can't comment on slicers.

 

[mtt.tr]

I do use geardxf, it's how I have printed gears before, importing the dxf into an old version of sketchup then drawing & opening in a newer version to export as a .dae file. Clunky, as I said but the only way I could find.

For CAD I used to use Draftsight but now that's gone outside of my budget. I'd pay for it but not £99 a year.

I've used Gearotic too, the free version which doesn't allow exporting. I don't know if my useage warrants the cost - I make gears from metal.

Librecad is pretty for 2d

In the case of 3d printing cad its hard to beat fusion

 

[Chris Snow]

Fusion 360. Hard to beat for non commercial use